BackdropArc

An Arc (atomically reference counted smart pointer) that supports customized dropping strategies using backdrop.

backdrop_arc::Arc<T, BackdropStrategy> works very much like a std::sync::Arc<T>, except for two differences:

1. Drop strategies

When the last clone of a particular Arc goes out of scope, rather than dropping normally, the particular BackdropStrategy is invoked. This way, dropping large or complex structures can be done in a background thread, background tokio task, delayed until later, etc.

This allows better reasoning about how long code using an Arc will take, since this is no longer dependent on 'do I own the last Arc or not?'.

An backdrop_arc::Arc<T, S> behaves much like a Arc<backdrop::Backdrop<Box<T>, S>>, in that the backdrop strategy is executed when the last Arc clone goes out of scope. The difference with Arc<backdrop::Backdrop<Box<T>, S>> is that there is no double pointer-indirection (arc -> box -> T), managing the allocated T is done directly in the Arc. [backdrop_arc::Arc]: https://docs.rs/backdrop_arc/latest/backdrop_arc/struct.Arc.html

2. No weak pointers => smaller arcs, predictable drop behaviour

[std::sync::Arc<T>] allows the usage of weak pointers. This is very helpful internally in self-referential structures (trees, graphs) but frequently not needed. On the other hand, weak pointers are not 'free':

• They make every Arc instance bigger (3 words instead of 2), since instead of storing (ptr, reference_count) they need to store (ptr, reference_count, weak_reference_count).
• They make dropping an Arc<T> more complex. The 'drop glue' of T will run once the last strong reference goes out of scope. But to not make Weak pointers dangle, the deallocation of T only happens when the last Weak pointer goes out of scope (see here). As you can imagine, this 'two part drop' interacts badly with BackdropStrategy where we want to e.g. move objects to a background thread on drop, because we need to make sure that the allocation of T lives long enough.

Therefore, backdrop_arc is modeled on the excellent triomphe library. Converting a [backdrop_arc::Arc] to and from a triomphe::Arc is a zero-cost operation, as the two types are guaranteed to have the same representation in memory. (The same holds true for [backdrop_arc::UniqueArc] <-> triomphe::UniqueArc)

Not supporting weak pointers enables a bunch of other features:

• [backdrop_arc::Arc] does not need any read-modify-update operations to handle the possibility of weak references.
• [backdrop_arc::UniqueArc] allows one to construct a temporarily-mutable Arc which can be converted to a regular [backdrop_arc::Arc] later.
• [backdrop_arc::OffsetArc] can be used transparently from C++ code and is compatible with (and can be converted to/from) [backdrop_arc::Arc].
• [backdrop_arc::ArcBorrow] is functionally similar to &backdrop_arc::Arc<T>, however in memory it's simply &T. This makes it more flexible for FFI; the source of the borrow need not be an Arc pinned on the stack (and can instead be a pointer from C++, or an OffsetArc). Additionally, this helps avoid pointer-chasing.
• [backdrop_arc::Arc] has can be constructed for dynamically-sized types via from_header_and_iter
• [backdrop_arc::ArcUnion] is union of two [backdrop_arc:Arc]s which fits inside one word of memory [std::sync::Arc]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/sync/struct.Arc.html [backdrop_arc::Arc]: https://docs.rs/backdrop_arc/latest/backdrop_arc/struct.Arc.html [backdrop_arc::UniqueArc]: https://docs.rs/backdrop_arc/latest/backdrop_arc/struct.UniqueArc.html [backdrop_arc::ArcBorrow]: https://docs.rs/backdrop_arc/latest/backdrop_arc/struct.ArcBorrow.html [backdrop_arc::ArcUnion]: https://docs.rs/backdrop_arc/latest/backdrop_arc/struct.ArcUnion.html [backdrop_arc::OffsetArc]: https://docs.rs/backdrop_arc/latest/backdrop_arc/struct.OffsetArc.html triomphe::Arc: https://docs.rs/triomphe/latest/triomphe/struct.Arc.html triomphe::UniqueArc: https://docs.rs/triomphe/latest/triomphe/struct.UniqueArc.html

Features

• backdrop_arc supports no_std environments, as long as alloc is available, by disabling the (enabled by default) std feature.
• serde: Enables serialization/deserialization with the serde crate.
• stable_deref_trait: Implements the StableDeref trait from the stable_deref_trait crate for [backdrop_arc::Arc].
• arc-swap: Use [backdrop_arc::Arc] together with the arc-swap crate.
• triomphe: Convert (zero-cost) between triomphe::Arc <-> [backdrop_arc::Arc] (and [backdrop_arc::UniqueArc] <-> triomphe::UniqueArc).
• unsize use [backdrop_arc::Arc] together with the unsize crate.

Attribution

The source code of backdrop_arc is very heavily based on (and originally a fork of) triomphe, which itself originates from servo_arc.